UN’s Assistant Secretary-General Toby Lanzer has warned that Nigeria is on the brink of the worst famine recorded in recent times as nearly a quarter of a million children in Nigeria’s north east are severely malnourished. This is in addition to the millions who are thought to be starving in refugee camps.
Coupled with the economic recession, slump in oil prices and weakened Naira, Nigeria is still grappling with the wreckage that Islamic militants, Boko Haram, are inflicting on the North East region of Nigeria. their activities are dragging agricultural activities in the region to a standstill.
Lanzer said if attention is not given to the country’s situation, “we will see, I think, a famine unlike any we have ever seen anywhere” Sky News reports.
The situation is not an exaggeration as a Medicins Sans Frontiers feeding center in Maidiguri records ever more people trooping in surpassing the capacities of the center. Jean Stonewell, who runs the center said ‘These are kids that basically have been hungry all their lives and some are so far gone that they die here in the first 24 hours’.
Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps are another sorry sight as food shortage abound amid allegations of corruptions among those officials responsible for feeding in the camps.
And for the commercials markets where food and fruits are readily available, their prices are sky high due to the economic crisis in the country making them unavailable for the average Nigerian.
Parts of this article originally appeared in Sky News.